~ A site for my creative writing endeavors, writing prompt responses, and experimentation.

My Precious

The writer’s prompt said to write a response to the one-word prompt, “Precious.” I chuckled to myself upon realizing my first thought was of Gollum hissing “My precioussss” in the Lord of the Rings movies.

“Curse us and splash us! My precious is lost!”

I can relate to that.

Not that I ever had One Ring to lose, mind you. Neither hobbit nor Sméagol nor golden band, my precious is time.

“Lost! Lost! My Precious is lost!”

Time is the “one ring to rule them all.” We are always searching for it, then wasting its awesome power when we have found it. Our frittering seconds become minutes become hours become years. As a writer, this precious is daunting. We productively procrastinate, using our one ring to do just one more Google search for that critical background. We convince ourselves that a few minutes of Facebooking will build our platform; a few minutes that drag on for hours. We re-edit the first paragraph a dozen times, wanting to get it perfect before going on to the much scarier chore of character and story development.

“We swears to serve the master of the precious. We will swear on the…on the precious.”

Yes, time is our master…a brutal, cynical master that laughs as we squander our precious gift from Chronos. We fight it, embrace it, consume it, and reproach ourselves for neglecting it. We have a love-hate relationship with time, with our precious.

I enjoyed this write. I don’t know about other writers, but I view procrastination as “trying.” In Yoda’s immortal (scripted) words, “There is no try – only do.” Unfortunately, I am much better at trying than doing.

Thanks, Chuck. I enjoyed writing it and it has been one of my most popular/most viewed posts. I’ve been trying to following Yoda’s sage advice, but that very sentence clause I just wrote violates it already. Sigh. 🙂